Women's Missionary Association: Malaya/Singapore

Malaya - minutes and correspondence, building plans

The first two WMA missionaries arrived in 1887 and 1888. A boarding school for girls was opened and work among Chinese women carried out. However, this work lasted only a few years and no other WMA missionary was appointed until 1927 when Margaret Dryburgh was transferred from Swatow. She took over the running of the Choon Goan school in a suburb of Singapore. Under her it rapidly developed and became eligible for government funding as a recognised secondary school. Dryburgh eventually became head of a girls' English school, known as Kuo Chuan School. Further WMA missionaries arrived in 1941, having been evacuated from Formosa. In 1942, following the evacuation from Singapore, four WMA missionaries, including Margaret Dryburgh, were interned. Three of them died in captivity. After the war, a new school for girls was formed in memory of Dryburgh while Kuo Chuan School was re-opened in 1946.

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